Intuition Menu image alignment

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mritter0
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Intuition Menu image alignment

Post by mritter0 »

I would like to see an image column be created to keep all the texts aligned. Do it just like the shortcut key column.
Menu1.png
So when some items don't have an image
Menu2.png
Menu2.png (7.43 KiB) Viewed 11162 times
Also to keep the checkmark boxes text aligned. Maybe make them 24x24 to match the images size? Auto scale to whatever size?
Menu3.png
Menu3.png (9.97 KiB) Viewed 11162 times
As is, I am using a 24x24 blank/transparent image to move in the item texts that don't have an image (Forum in image 2). And a 6x24 image to move checkbox text over. (not shown)
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broadblues
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Re: Intuition Menu image alignment

Post by broadblues »

What you ask would be very limiting, even if more tidy for the simplest cases, as an image might be any width and height, they need not be the same as AISS currently defaults.

If you had a good reason to do so,you could also use a lable image or more complex BOOPSI image for the whole width of the menu for example. If you then mixed that with text , and text image menus and enforcred alignment it would break quite quickly.

Short cut keys a right justified against the right edge so apear to be aligned ina way that they aren't. Try a more complex short cut like shift-ctrl-a and see if that fits!
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mritter0
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Re: Intuition Menu image alignment

Post by mritter0 »

Menu4.png
Shortcut keys look neatly lined up to me.

You can't honestly tell me that the mish-mash of images and text all zig-zagging looks "professional"? It looks terrible. Anyone with any GUI design knowledge would laugh at it.

Like I said: do it just like the shortcut key column. Grow/shrink as needed. If no images, then 24 is the "default" indentation.

No, not everyone will use AISS, but the majority will. And why can't 16x16 and 24x24 be made the Amiga standard? Why have a Style Guide at all then?
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chris
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Re: Intuition Menu image alignment

Post by chris »

mritter0 wrote:Like I said: do it just like the shortcut key column. Grow/shrink as needed. If no images, then 24 is the "default" indentation.
When the layouting is done, the empty space left should be the width of the widest image. If there are no images in the menu, no space should be left. The checkmark should be counted as an image in these cases and treated identically. If a menu item has an image and a checkmark, if that is permitted then the image column width would be the two added together.

As Andy says, this could cause problems if some menu items have a wide image and no label (and there may be other reasons for it to be undesirable). There would need to be some sort of MA_AutoAlignment tag that can be disabled for individual items or entire menus.
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Re: Intuition Menu image alignment

Post by broadblues »

Why have a Style Guide at all then?
The style guide is a guide, not intended to be hardcoded into software so that you can't break it when needed or when it goes out of date.

I would say all items in a block of menus items (ie between spacer bars) should have either have images or not and using a transparent spacer as a fallback for missing images makes sense in that case.

Trying to second guess the alignment related to checkbox amd mx images will lways get you into trouble though, as they will change size on different themes.

The actual menus haven't really chnages and they still followe the old pattern of

[ Checkbox image ] | label (left justified) | [shortcut (right justified)] [ sub meny image]

The new MA_Image is part of the label.

I'd would have like the MA_image to be to left of the checkbox, but that's not the way it works so....
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Re: Intuition Menu image alignment

Post by chris »

broadblues wrote:I'd would have like the MA_image to be to left of the checkbox, but that's not the way it works so....
That would break selectable items that have their label entirely defined as a BOOPSI image...
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mritter0
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Re: Intuition Menu image alignment

Post by mritter0 »

Trying to second guess the alignment related to checkbox amd mx images will lways get you into trouble though, as they will change size on different themes.
Just covering all my bases for my "blank" images to align better. I don't see an option for this. Does it exist? I would think the glyph would always be the same (hard coded in). But yes, allow for customization to a certain extent: size (max 24x24) and images/colors.

That would break selectable items that have their label entirely defined as a BOOPSI image...
Since this is a new MenuClass, don't allow this anymore and it won't be a problem. Using that "style" is no longer needed so shouldn't affect anyone. Follow the new guide lines.
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Re: Intuition Menu image alignment

Post by chris »

mritter0 wrote:I would think the glyph would always be the same (hard coded in)
No, glyphs are scaleable and in the case of menus they are scaled based on the font height.
That would break selectable items that have their label entirely defined as a BOOPSI image...
Since this is a new MenuClass, don't allow this anymore and it won't be a problem. Using that "style" is no longer needed so shouldn't affect anyone. Follow the new guide lines.
I can think of reasons why this might be needed. Why restrict it? Maybe a tag to swap image and checkbox would be more sensible (although you're getting into weird inconsistencies here).
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mritter0
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Re: Intuition Menu image alignment

Post by mritter0 »

If glyphs are scalable, then they should honor MA_EvenSize,TRUE, and scale to match the others around it.

Better yet, allow us to supply our own checkbox and MX images via tags.
MA_CheckboxImage and MA_MXImage
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Re: Intuition Menu image alignment

Post by broadblues »

mritter0 wrote:If glyphs are scalable, then they should honor MA_EvenSize,TRUE, and scale to match the others around it.
They aren't always scalable, they are GUI theme dependent, the simplest theme has scalable glyphs, most other's do not, they have more elgant bitmaps that fit into the other style of the GUI theme.

If you create a screen for an app in Screen Prefs and disable the GUI prefs so it falls back to the internal default, you'll see that the images for checkbox and MX (which are the same checkmark image by the looks of it) do scale to the height of the of the menu, and so look much the same size as the MA_Image.
Better yet, allow us to supply our own checkbox and MX images via tags.
MA_CheckboxImage and MA_MXImage
That would overide the user chosen GUI theme, which adds confusion to understanding what menus do.

However with menu class you menu can be dynamic, so you might toggle between two menu entries with different MA_Images, ideally IMHO you should only do that for a very specific case, such as fullscreen / windowed where you might show the fullscreen option when in windowed mode and the windowed option when in screen mode. Not as a general replecement for MX or checkmark.
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